May 25, 2020 George Floyd

Sep 26 2020 – George Floyd mural under construction across from Gandhi Mahal . Mural began after Sep 8, 2020.

The emphasis of today’s Sunday May 25, 2025 Minnesota StarTribune is full of commentary on what happened in Minneapolis 5 years ago today.  There were additional significant coverage in surrounding issues of the newspaper.  I think the paper made a significant effort to reflect differing points of view.

Here is the link to the posts I wrote at this space May 27, 29, 30, 31, 2020.  In particular note May 29-31 posts.

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Update May 30, 2025:  Sometime overnight on May 29, 2020, several buildings on 27th at Lake Street in Minneapolis.  One of the building destroyed was Gandhi Mahal, a restaurant which I knew well, and whose owners was a personal friend I’d known for some years.

In the first photo, below, is a snapshot I took of Gandhi Mahal and its neighbor store on July 28, 2020.  The remains of Gandhi Mahal are to the left in the photo.  Roughly in the center of the photo is another part of the restaurant which didn’t burn.  What I was told is that the fire spread from the Nuevo El Rodeo building next door into the basement of Gandhi Mahal next door.  The surviving section apparently did not have a basement, and for whatever reason survived.

The second photo is taken on May 29, 2025. The other apparently undamaged buildings to the right, along with the section of Gandhi Mahal, were all demolished after the fire.  The postoffice at the end of the block (to the right off the photograph) was rebuilt.  I mailed a letter there on the 29th.  The space on which Gandhi Mahal and the other businesses stood is being redeveloped into something not specifically known, but apparently not another building.

Finally, I visited this area on numerous occasions after May, 2020.  In fairly short order, a mural honoring the memory of George Floyd was painted on the wall of a closed Barber Shop across the street from Gandhi Mahal.  The mural stayed as it had been until recently, when someone defaced it (photo May 29 2025).  I hope it is restored.

Ruins of Gandhi Mahal center to left of picture. July 28, 2020.  (The third of three sections of the restaurant – at center, above – survived the fire itself, but the entire half block was razed.)

Gandhi Mahal area, looking north, May 29, 2025.  A conversation with a worker indicated that this space might become a soccer field, but that is unknown for certain.  A block away, the fire damaged and abandoned 3rd Police Precinct building is apparently. being repurposed as a Democracy Center for Minneapolis (according to a poster at the site).  At right, mostly not visible, the other half of the city block accommodates a branch of the Minneapolis Public Library, and a Lutheran Church, neither of which were damaged on May 29, 2020.

Defaced George Floyd mural across from former Gandhi Mahal May 29, 2025.  I first noted this defacement on April 26, 2025, and don’t know when it originated, etc.

FINAL NOTE: There are many questions about what happened in Minneapolis-St. Paul beginning May 27, 2020.  For me, personally, the fires are most concerning: who set them, why?  Were they orchestrated or organized by someone?  Who actually did the deeds those awful nights.  I don’t know. Perhaps no one does.

What I do know is that the criminals could easily disguise themselves, and totally legally.  To be masked was to be more safe in the time of Covid-19.  The police and fire seem to have been disabled.  Yes, there was looting, but I see that as totally separate from the burning.  I won’t even attempt to propose an answer, but I think the question is important: why?

A few days after the problems in the Twin Cities – I believe it was June 2, 2020, is when the President of the United States had the dramatic upside Bible picture taken by the church across from the Capitol.  And the Law and Order narrative became a more active part of his conversation, and focused on presumably liberal cities where some other problems occurred.